Cost-efficient pathways to decarbonizing Portland cement production

Gunther Glenk, Anton Kelnhofer, Rebecca Meier and Stefan Reichelstein

No 23-023, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Accounting for nearly 8% of global annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the cement industry is considered difficult to decarbonize. While a sizeable number of abatement levers for Portland cement production are technologically ready for deployment, many are still viewed as prohibitively expensive. Here we develop a generic abatement cost framework for identifying cost-efficient pathways toward substantial emission reductions. We calibrate our model with new industry data in the context of European cement plants that must obtain emission permits under the European Emission Trading System. We find that a price of €81 per ton of CO2, as observed on average in 2022, incentivizes firms to reduce their annual direct emissions by about one-third relative to the status quo. Yet, this willingness to abate emissions increases sharply at a carbon price of €100 per ton. If cement producers were to expect such carbon price levels to persist in the future, they would have incentives to reduce emissions by almost 80% relative to current emission levels.

Keywords: marginal abatement cost; carbon emissions; industrial decarbonization; cement production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M1 O33 Q42 Q52 Q54 Q55 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/273463/1/1853071684.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:23023

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().